Right of Reply

The director of Respect for Animals argues that mink do not deserve their current vilification

THE MEDIA have used adjectives such as "vicious", "bloodthirsty" and "a menace" to describe the mink released from the Hampshire fur factory farm last Saturday. Advice proffered to members of the public coming across them has included: "Under no circumstances should anyone try to corner them"; "When cornered, they go for the throat" and "They frighten and rob fishermen".

Maybe it is surprising that, so far at least, no babies have been plucked from their cradles never to be seen again.

In reality, the mink are the innocent victims of this latest episode of human interference - as they have been in this country since 1929 when they were first imported here to be kept for their fur.

Early escapees found survival hard and it was not until 1956 that the first mink were recorded as breeding here - incidentally, way before the formation of any animal liberation groups. By 1962 the first controls were introduced to prevent escapes, but they came too late and attempts by the Ministry of Agriculture to eradicate those mink already in the wild had to be abandoned.

In the fur factory farms mink can be confined in tiny, barren wire cages and can be driven to stereotyped behaviour, self-mutilation and cannibalism. The mink released over the weekend face being shot, run over or starved to death. The area into which they have been released is not well populated with small mammals.

Mink are not nasty, voracious killers; they are perfectly ordinary, natural carnivores removed by people from their native homeland - North America - and deposited in unnatural surroundings with species with which they have not evolved. They behave just like any other small carnivore and deserve a better break than they are getting - from everyone.